The Pirates Own Book

by Charles Ellms

Overview

Book Excerpt: ...the Saracens.[Illustration: Awilda, the Female Pirate.]Another division of Normans, some years afterwards, in the same spirit of emigration, and thirsting, perhaps, to avenge their injured ancestors, burst into the provinces of France, which the degeneracy of Charlemagne's posterity, and the dissensions which prevailed there, rendered an affair of no great difficulty. Louis le Debonnaire had taken every means of keeping on good terms with them; annually persuading some to become Christians, and then sending them home so loaded with presents, that it was discovered they came to be baptized over and over again, merely for the sake of the gifts, as Du Chesne tells us. But on the subsequent division of the empire among the undutiful sons of Louis, the pirates did not fail to take advantage of the general confusion; braving the sea almost every summer in their light coracles, sailing up the Seine, the Somme, or the Loire, and devastating the best parts of France, almost without resistance...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780464081845
Publisher:	Blurb, Inc.
Publication date:	10/02/2019
Pages:	326
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.68(d)

Read an Excerpt

The weariest and most loathed worldly life. That age, ache, penury and imprisonment Can lay on Nature, is a Paradise To that we fear of Death." Death is a fearful thing. The mere mention of it sometimes blanches the cheek, and sends the fearful blood to the heart. It is a solemn thing to break into the "bloody - Page 69 -"He was the mildest manner'd man, That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat; With such true breeding of a gentleman, You never could discern his real thought. Pity he loved an adventurous life's variety, He was so great a loss to good society. - Page 153 soul! But I look forward to that serene calm when I shall sleep with Kings and Counsellors of the earth. There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at - Page 59